CHILD AND ADOLESCENT

LEARNERS AND
LEARNING PRINCIPLES
(MODULE 4)
Prepared by: LARMAINE JANE B. PLANDO, LPT.
PHYSICAL AND
MOTOR
DEVELOPMENT
NATURE OF GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

▪ Life is a constant change and growth is among the greatest and the most exciting. Its is an
extraordinary complicated process in living organism. The mechanisms of growth in inanimate
objects are the simple accretion, while living organism grown by metabolism, from within. In
addition to increase in size, organic growth involves differentiation and change in form. The
baby sprang from a single fertilized egg to become a multi-million cellular organism.

▪ Organic growth consist of three element:

1. Increase in size;
2. Differentiation of structure; and
3. Alteration of form.
• On the other hand, development constitutes something more than those 3
elements of growth. Those 3 elements while comprising development, still
undergo of series of orderly and irreversible stages than every organism
goes thought from the beginning of its life to the end. Growth is only one
aspect of the larger process of development. While the baby gets bigger in
size, his body parts such as his lower limbs gain strength and stability to
enable him to use them in setting him in an upright position.
PHYSICAL AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT OF
THE CHILD
▪ As the baby grows, it also develops. The baby`s change in size is accompanied with
developmental changes in pattern of growth and behavior. The “developmental
process pattern” of growth is seen in the direction and growth rates of the individual.
Changes came about through different growth rates for the different part of the body.
The head starts growing at a very rapid rate almost immediately after conceptions.
The trunk is the next in growth rate, and then the legs and arms. This progressive
differential growth- first the head, then the trunk, then the legs—has been designated
by the term cephalocaudal (from foot to head ).

▪ While the body has been growing in length, it has also been growing in a
proximodistal direction, that is, from the central of the peripheral. For example, the
trunk and the shoulders develop first and then the arms, finger and toes begin their
real growth.
GROWTH OF BODY ORGANS
▪ Then various organs of man can be grouped into four different growth rates:
1. Positive acceleration which is a very slow growth during childhood and then extremely
rapid acceleration at puberty. Examples are the genital organs.
2. Negative acceleration with rapid growth during the first six years of life and then a sharp
slowing down such as the brain and its parts.
3. Reversal growth such a the lymphoid group which increase very rapidly at the first, then
actually decrease is size. The lymphoid group consist of the thymus, lymph nodes and
intestinal lymphoid masses.
4. S-Shaped curve which starts and end with rapid growth periods separated by a long period
of very little gain. This is the “general” type of growth.
SOME COMMON SKILLS IN THE EARLY
CHILDHOOD STAGE
▪ HAND SKILLS
1. Self-feeding. At eight months, most babies can hold their bottles after the nipples
have been placed in their months; at nine months, they can put the bottle nipples in
their months and take them out without help. At twelve months, they can drink
from a cup when they hold.
2. Self-dressing. At the end of the first year, most babies can pull off their socks,
shoes, caps and mittens. By the middle of the second year the will attempt to put on
caps an mitten, and by the end of babyhood they can pull off all clothes and put on
a shirt or dress.
3. Self-grooming. Self-bathing is limited mainly to running a cloth or sponge over the
face and body. Before they are two, most babies try to brush their hair and teeth.
• PLAY SKILLS
Babies learn to jump from an elevated position usually by movements resembling walking.
They learn to climb stairs first by crawling and creeping. After they can walk alone, they go up
and down steps in an upright position, placing one foot on a step and then drawing the other
foot up after it . Very few babies are able to ride tricycles at this age and then only when they are
held on the seat. They can learn by splashing withier arms and kicking their legs.
PATTERN OF MOTOR CONTROL
▪ Head Region
1. Eye Control. Optic nystagmus or the response of the eyes to a succession of
moving objects, begins about twelve hours after birth; ocular pursuit movements,
between the third and fourth weeks; horizontal eyes movements, between the
second and third months; vertical eyes movements, between the third and fourth
months; and circular eye movement , several month later.

2. Smiling. Reflex smiling, or smiling in response to a tactual stimulus, appears

during the first week of life; social smiling, or smiling in response to the smile of
another person, begins between the third and fourth months.

3. Head Holding. In a prone position, babies can hold their heads erect at one
month; when lying on their backs, at five months; and when held in a sitting
position, between four and six months.
 • Trunk Region

1. Rolling. Babies can roll from side to back at two months and from
back to side at four months. At six months, they can roll over
completely.

2. Sitting. The baby can pull to a sitting position at four months, sit with
support at five months, sit without support momentarily at seven
months, and sit up without support for the or more minutes at nine
months.
 • Arm and Hand Region

1. Hands. Thumbs opposition- the working of the thumb in opposition to the fingers- appears
in grasping between three and four months an in picking up objects between eight and ten
months.

2. Arms. The baby can reach for objects by six or seven months and can pick up small object
without random movements by one year.

• Leg Region

1. Shifting of the body by kicking occurs by the end of the second week. Hitching, or moving
in a sitting position, appears by six months. Crawling and creeping appear between eight
and ten months, and at eleven months, babies walk on “all fours.” Babies can pull
themselves to a standing position at about then months, stand with support at eleven
months, stand without support at one year, walk with support at eleven months or one year
, and walk without support after fourteen months.
RESEARCH STUDIES ON MOTOR
CONTROL
▪ Dennis (1941) studied a pair of girl twins whom he kept on their back for
the first 36 weeks of their lives, thus preventing any practice in sitting or
standing. Several weeks later they were able to sit alone. At 52 weeks
the twins were given their first opportunity to stand with support. They
were unable to do so, but within 3 days they had succeeded. One twin
suffered no retardation in crawling , standing alone or walking
independently while the other twin soon caught up with the normal
developmental rate.
LATE CHILD PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
▪ Height. The annual increase in height is 2 to 3 inches. The average eleven- year old
girl is 58 inches tall and the average boy of the same age 57.3 tall.
▪ Weight. Weight increase is more variable than height increase, ranging from 3 to 5
more pound annually. The average eleven year old girl weight 88.5 pounds, and
average boy of the same age weight 85.5 pounds.
▪ Body Proportion. Although the head is still proportionately too large for the rest of the
body, some of the facial disproportion disappear as the mouth and jaw become
larger, the forehead broadens and flatten, the lips fill out, the nose become larger and
acquires more shape. The trunk elongates and become slimmer, the neck becomes
longer, the chest abdomen flattens, the arm and legs lengthen( although the appear
spindly and shapeless because of underdeveloped musculature), and the hands and
feet grow longer , but at a slow rate.
• Homeliness. The body disproportion, so pronounce during late childhood, are primarily
responsible for the increase in homeliness at this time. In addition, careless grooming and a
tendency to wear clothes like those of peers, regardless of their becomingness, contribute
to homeliness.

• Muscle-Fat Ration. During the late childhood, fat tissues develop more rapidly than muscle
tissues which have a marked growth spurt beginning at puberty. Children of endomorphic
builds have a mark conspicuously more fat than, muscle tissues while the reverse is true of
those of monomorphic builds. Ectomorphs do not have a predominance of either, and this
accounts for their tendency to look scrawny.

• Teeth. Onset of puberty, a child normally has twenty-eight of the thirty -two permanent
teeth. The last four, the wisdom teeth, erupt during adolescence.
LATE CHILDHOOD SKILLS
Hurlock (1982) classified these skilled into: self-help skills, social- help skills, school skills,
and play skills.

▪ Self-help Skills. Order children should be able to eat, dress, bathe, and groom themselves
with almost as much speed and adeptness as an adult, and these skills should not require
the conscious attention that was necessary in early childhood.

▪ Social-Help Skilled. Skills in this category relate to helping others. At home, they include
making beds, dusting, and sweeping; at the school. They include emptying wastebasket
and washing chalkboards; and in the play group. They include helping to construct a tree
house or lay out a baseball diamond.
• School Skills. At school, the child develops the skills needed in writing,
drawing, painting, clay modeling, dancing, crayoning , sewing, cooking
and woodworking.

• Play Skills. The older child learns such skills as throwing and catching
balls, riding a bicycle, skating, and swimming connection with play.

• Handedness. By the time the reach late childhood, most children are so
predominantly right- or left-handed that changing handedness is far from
easy. Doing so must be with caution and only under certain conditions.
 THE ADOLESCENT PHYSICAL
DEVELOPMENT

At puberty, a considerable alteration in growth rate occurs. There is a

swift increase in body size, a change in shape and composition of the
body, and a rapid development of the gonads, or sex glands- the
reproductive organs and the character signaling sexual maturity. Some
of these changes are common to both sexes, but most are sex
specification.
• HEIGHT AND WEIGHT

In childhood, boys and girls of the same age are practically the same height. But the boys'
growth spurt during adolesnce is markedly greater. While it is going on, the average boy grows
approximately eight inches taller and adds 45 pounds to his weight; at its peak, about 14 years
of age, he is growing at the rate of four inches a year.

• MUSCULAR AND SKELETAL DIMENSION

Practically all skeletal and muscular dimensions take part within the spurt in puberty though
not to an equal degree. Every muscular and skeletal dimensions of the body seems to tae part
in the adolescent spurt. The growth of the heart, stomach and visceral organs speed up. The
head, whose increase in size has been almost imperceptible since the child was eight, steps
up its pace of growth slightly.
• FACIAL CONTOUR

The contours of the face which have been altering gradually throughout childhood, show
particularly marked changes. The whole profile becomes more angular, the forehead
more prominent, the chin more pointed, the nose longer. These changes which are
associated with the growth of facial bone, are accompanied by subtle changes in mucle
size and in the distribution of fatty tissues under the skin, making the adolescent's facial
expression so different from that of a child.

• STRENGHT

In both sexes, strenght increases, although the increase is proportionately much greater
in boys than in girls. Before puberty, most girls can hold their own in tussles with boys of
the same age. But this is no longer so after the growth spurt. From then on, the male
sex is truly the stronger one. To cite one example: the average boy can exert ore than
120 pounds of thrust with one arm, as against 70 pounds for girls. It seems to be true
that a boy can, in a certain sense, outgrow his strenght. Strength increases during the
growth spurt but sometimes more slowly, at first, the height and weight.
• DIFFERENCES IN GROWTH RATE

Growth may continue although slowly, for many years after adolescence though
imperceptibly. For all practical purposes, however, growth ceases in the teens.
On the average, boys reach 98 percent of their final height by the time they are
17 3/4, girls by the time they are 16 1/2.These statisticaland descriptive
summaries of the adolescent spurt, oversimplify what is in fact a rather
complicated process. Detailed studies have shown that the various parts of the
body grow at different rates, as do various dimensions of each part. Moreover,
each part, each dimensions reaches its maximum rate of growth at a different
time.
• DISADVANTAGES OF LATE GROWTH

Differences in individual rates of growth can create social and psychological difficulties. For
instance, the child who is ahead in physical development at an early age of his life is likely to
remain ahead of his contemporaries throughout the growing years despite temporary
setbacks. But not so with the child who develops slowly and late. Though he may eventually
grow taller than the child who matures early, h may meanwhile be made miserable in a
number of ways.

• ABNORMAL DEVELOPMENTS

In some human beings, that most important growth-controlling gland, the pituitary, functions
abnormally. The results are startling and most often tragic. The two extremes of human
stature are giantism and dwarfism, and while other factors are sometimes involved, the usual
cause of these abnormalities is the production by the pituitary of too much or too little of its
growth hormone.
1. HYPERPITUITARISM- it's an oversupply of pituitary growth hormone that can result in
two conditions; if it occurs during the growing years, the result is giantism which
produces an individual of enormous proportions. In cases of this sort, excessive growth
is usually concentrated chiefly in the head and lower extremities.

2. ACROMEGALY- When it strikes a person whose overall growth has been completed,
hyperpituitarism causes acromegaly. The chief symptom of this is the enlargement of
various parts of the body, most notably the head, hands and feet, accompanied by the
lethargy and severe headache.

Two methods are most usual to its treatment: surgical removal of the pituitary, and the use of
radiation to slow its activity. This can involve planting radioactive material right in the glad or
assaulting it with a powerful stream of radiation.